Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

Carleton University professor Nick Rowe received a well-deserved tribute, on his retirement from teaching, in The Economist magazine. I was fortunate to have known him as a colleague, but regret that I never had the opportunity to enroll in one of his macroeconomics courses. Sadly for me, he completed his PhD in 1985, long after I did. Current and future generations of economists will also miss the opportunity of learning from him. But all of us can continue to benefit from reading his many posts online at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative (WCI).

Professors may find themselves ill-prepared for the macro classroom. To become academics they had to answer erudite questions posed by more senior members of the discipline. To become good teachers of introductory macro, they have to give clear answers to muddled students. That requires an intuitive feel for the subject. It is not enough to crank through the equations.

Indeed, Mr Rowe attributes part of his success as a teacher to his shortcomings as a mathematician. He quotes Joan Robinson, another clear expositor of macroeconomics: “I never learned maths, so I had to think.” Because the answers did not leap out at him from the equations, he had to dwell on the economic behaviour underneath the algebra.

Maria Campbell’s memoir, Halfbreed, is short (157 pages) and free-flowing. It is a shocking, true account of what it is like to grow up poor and mixed-race in Canada. The book today is read almost universally by school children in Canada. (more…)

Tags: Canada Posted in History | Comments Off on Priests, Mounties and poverty in indigenous Canada

I finished reading this fascinating book, and would like to share a few segments with you. The entire book is useful for anyone considering the right to life of a fetus or the right to life (or death) of an unconscious, older person in a vegetative state. It has made me re-think my ‘living will’, my request that no special efforts be made to prolong my life should I become unconscious and unresponsive.

What is consciousness? This is a surprisingly complex question. The author of this book, British neuroscientist Adrian Owen, explains that “part of the problem is that questions about consciousness have as much to do with personal taste as science”. (more…)

Canada provides persons from age 65 with a Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS, currently C$871.86 a month for a single person), but claws it back at the steep rate of 50% from other income. There is no exempt amount, and some provinces add to this. The provincial claw back in Alberta, for example, is 18%, bringing the total rate of claw back to 68%.

Canada also provides residents from age 65 with an Old Age Pension (currently a maximum of $585 a month for a single person) that is reduced (clawed back) at the rate of 15% from taxable income in excess of $74,788 a year, so is equivalent to an increase in income tax of 15 percentage points for high income older persons until the full Old Age Pension is recovered. Receipt of the Old Age Pension does not count as income for a GIS.

Why do government policymakers in Canada implicitly tax the income of older persons at a higher rate than of younger persons with the same incomes? Perhaps they do not realize that means tests (clawbacks) are taxes. Simultaneously, though, the government has programmes in place to encourage workers to save for old age, to build up a retirement fund that is subjected to a high rate of taxation in old age. This puzzles me.

Canada also mandates contributions to a state pension, known as Canada Pension Plan. Canadian actuary Robert Brown, in a useful article, explains why increasing the contributions to (and benefits from) this plan harms contributors with low incomes, because it causes them to lose benefits that they would otherwise receive from the Guaranteed Income Supplement. He doesn’t mention this, but taxpayers with high incomes also lose benefits from expansion of the noncontributory Old Age Pension. No doubt he assumes (most likely correctly) that those with high incomes can look after themselves! Also, $585 a month is small change for someone with an income in excess of $6,200 a month. (more…)

President Trump, in his inaugural address, used the phrase “American carnage” to describe his country. FT columnist Martin Sandbu agrees with Mr Trump’s assessment, but finds nothing in his policies that might lead to improvement.

American decline is not a figment of Mr Trump’s imagination. The US economy has left large numbers of people with stagnant wages for decades. It is an economy in which millions fewer people have a job than at the peak in 2000, and which still leaves tens of millions without secure, decent healthcare.

It is an economy dotted with towns that were thriving within living memory, but have been devastated by the loss of factory jobs — lost because automation made plants too productive to need as much human labour as before, or because a failure to automate made them uncompetitive against rivals.

Above all, it is an economy in which centuries-old progress against mortality has gone in reverse for middle-aged low-educated Americans, who are dying from the afflictions of broken lives and broken communities: drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide.

This week, the US tech companies were disturbed to learn that Donald Trump had won the presidential election. The fear is that Trump will carry out a promise to restrict H1-B visas, making it difficult for them to recruit skilled guest workers.

Hannah Kuchler, FT San Francisco correspondent, provides the full story. One paragraph, which is very optimistic (at least for actuaries and for Canada!), caught my attention.

If Mr Trump does restrict immigration in the industry, tech companies will find other ways to benefit from foreign expertise. Mr [Rob] Atkinson [president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think-tank] said some might expand in countries that make it easier to hire immigrants such as Canada, where Justin Trudeau’s administration is creating an innovation policy that will encourage companies to hire high-skilled software engineers, wherever they are from. Mr [Brian] Kropp [human resources leader at CEB] suggested companies could launch more extensive training programmes, for example, taking a group of actuaries and training them to be data scientists.

Here is the cartoon published on the editorial page of today’s weekend edition of The Globe and Mail. It is not yet available online. I am able to show it to you thanks to the miracle of modern technology: a built-in camera on my mobile phone, and transfer of the photo to my computer over the internet. Click on the image for a better view of the cartoon.

The cartoon reflects the shock of Canadians who learned this week that a young offender has been held in solitary confinement continuously for nearly four years. This is torture. No-one in a civilised country should be subjected to torture, with or without trial, regardless of the crime that he or she may have committed.

Below is some information on the case, copied and pasted from a front-page article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. For details, click on the link below. How many Adam Capays are in solitary confinement in Canada’s jails and prisons, out of sight and out of mind? No-one knows, but with this publicity, hopefully the conditions of their confinement will become less harsh.

The upper echelons of the Ontario government knew about the plight of a young inmate long held in solitary confinement at Thunder Bay Jail for at least nine months before taking action this week. ….

Mr. [Adam] Capay is the young aboriginal prisoner who has languished for upward of four years in solitary confinement awaiting trial for a crime he allegedly committed when he was 19. The circumstances of his incarceration – an acrylic-glass-encased cell bathed in 24-hour artificial light – only came to light last week after the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission spoke publicly about her first-hand encounter with Mr. Capay.

On Thursday, the current minister in charge of corrections, David Orazietti, vowed to do better for the inmate, saying he will remain in the new cell he’s been moved to – in solitary, but with access to a day room including a television and a shower – indefinitely.

Canada last year made a commitment to bring 25,000 of Syria’s 4.5 million refugees to the country as immigrants. The 25,000 target was met in early 2016, and 30,862 Syrian refugees are now in Canada. This is a small number compared to the total number of refugees, but large compared to the 10,000 number of the USA, which attained this low target only in August of 2016. The US population is ten times larger than that of Canada, yet Canada has brought in three times as many refugees.

The small city of Victoria, BC (metropolitan population 345,000) has warmly welcomed 154 Syrian refugees (40 families). Some of the refugees are supported by Canada’s federal government, others by private sponsors such as churches, temples and mosques. There is no discrimination by religion. Jewish temples, for example, proudly sponsor Muslim refugees.

There has been little press coverage in Canada of this influx of Syrian refugees, a reflection of the fact that resettlement is taking place peacefully, without incidents. The initial flood of refugee support has unfortunately slowed, however, precisely because refugees rarely feature in the news. For this reason, I was pleased to see publication in a Victoria newspaper of a plea for more sponsors of refugees.

[Jean McRae, CEO of the Intercultural Association of Greater Victoria] explained language is a significant issue for the newcomers.

“Without a working knowledge of English, it’s hard for them to find employment, and the children, who have already had significant disruptions in their education, find it difficult to catch up in a new language,” said McRae, adding the stellar work of the school system and volunteers in providing help with English education has helped to address the situation.

“We also run workshops on the Canadian workplace, teaching the refugees how to look for work, prepare a resume, reply to online job offerings and even how to handle interviews. It’s a completely different culture, and we know that getting them here was just the beginning of the work that needs to be done.” ….

The commitment of the government and private sponsors has been to provide housing and support for one year, noted McRae, adding that, for some, it may not be reasonable to expect full self sufficiency at the end of that time.

“Of course, we’ll stay in touch with them beyond the first year and help where we can. But I can tell you these people are quite amazing and I have no doubt they’ll soon find their way to becoming self sufficient and contributing residents to Victoria.”

Medical care in Canada is widely praised, and is indeed excellent, especially compared to the costly medical care system of its southern neighbour. Slowly and illegally, though, in some provinces the system is becoming less universal. If this trend continues, access to basic health care in Canada will depend more and more on price (ability to pay) rather than need.

Dr Ryan Meili, a Saskatchewan physician, appeals for the federal government to restore the universality of medicare by enforcing existing legislation (the Canada Health Act).

Extra-billing in Ontario, private MRIs in Saskatchewan and user fees in Quebec: violations of the Canada Health Act are on the rise across the country. Canadian doctors are concerned about the impact of this trend not only on their patients, but on our public health care system as well.

…. Provinces that are not in compliance [with the conditions for payment under the Canada Health Act] are to be penalized with a reduced Canada Health Transfer (CHT) payment.

This year’s report showed that in 2014-15, the only province that received such a penalty was British Columbia. Their CHT payment was docked $241,637 ….

In Ontario alone, the frequency of such charges has grown at an alarming rate …. [I]ndependent health facilities (e.g. eye surgery, colonoscopy, diagnostic and executive health clinics) charged extra fees for medical consultations, examinations, diagnostic testing and other manners of “upgraded services.” These fees are for services that are covered by the health system. This is otherwise known as extra-billing, a practice that is against federal and provincial law.

Despite these contraventions, … Ontario has never been penalized. ….

User fees, access charges, extra billing all come down to the same thing — inequitable access to Canadian health care.

Charging patients at the point of care for medically necessary services strikes at the heart of the principle that access to health care should be based on need rather than ability to pay. It undermines equity, increases system costs and reduces public commitment to universal coverage. ….

It is time … to ensure medicare will be there for all Canadians in their time of need.

There is a nice article (with photos) in today’s New York Times that reports the warm welcome that Canadians are providing refugees from Syria. Everything has gone very smoothly so far. Here is a brief excerpt: